World Bank Specialist Highlights Ethiopia’s Climate-Smart Agriculture Achievements

Addis ababa: World Bank Senior Agricultural Specialist Tim Robertson has commended Ethiopia's great job of building its capacity in climate-smart agriculture. Ethiopia is making significant strides in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to combat high vulnerability to climate change, with initiatives focusing on increasing agricultural productivity, enhancing resilience, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.According to Ethiopian News Agency, key advancements include the adoption of drought-resistant crops, the expansion of small-scale irrigation, and rehabilitation of degraded land. In an exclusive interview, Tim Robertson, Senior Agricultural Specialist at the World Bank, said Ethiopia has done a great job of building its capacity in climate-smart agriculture.Praising Ethiopia's successful initiatives in climate-smart agriculture, he stressed the need to make sure that everybody across the region benefits from it like the Green Legacy initiative. The Senior Agricultural Specialist also emphasized the signi ficance of working very closely with the government, with regional institutions, to look at ways to build upon this huge success that Ethiopia has had.Furthermore, he stressed the need for scaling up the capacity of governments to undertake climate-smart agriculture across East and Southern Africa. According to him, the World Bank is working with governments to attract private sector investments into climate-smart agriculture and help the link between investments in climate-smart agriculture and increase jobs, especially for young people.In addition, Robertson pointed out the significance of encouraging more innovation and use of digital solutions, use of sustainable energy and climate-smart agriculture. He stressed the need to maximize the partnerships and relationships between institutions as international financing of agriculture has changed quite dramatically in the past year or so.'One of the things that institutions could do is look at the ways that they can work more closely together, maximize th eir financing, maximize their value addition; so that we are all collaborating in one direction.'Ethiopia's key climate-smart agriculture progress and initiatives include fertilizer and soil health roadmap, turning underutilized land productive, wheat self-sufficiency, Green Legacy initiative and livestock system support management to enhance climate resilience, among others.